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e-IRG requests comments on its 2016 Roadmap in open consultation

Published Date 27/10/16 13:35

The e-IRG has published the draft of its 2016 Roadmap. It is now requesting comments in an open consultation. It is open for everyone to provide comments. These will be collected and published and used to prepare the final version of the e-IRG Roadmap 2016. The Open Consultation closes on 2016-11-10. The final Roadmap 2016 will be published on 2016-12-05.

In the Roadmap 2016 e-IRG intends to define a clear route on how to evolve the European e-infrastructure system further, and turn the vision of the e-Infrastructure Commons into reality for 2020. e-IRG is convinced that the implementation of the e-infrastructure Commons is a large step towards European leadership in research infrastructures including e-infrastructures, including the realisation of the European Open Science Cloud and the EU Data Infrastructure, which are part of the Digital Single Market Technologies and the Public Service Modernisation Package.

The key recommendations, further elaborated on in the Roadmap text, are:

1. Research infrastructures and research communities should reinforce their efforts to:

elaborate on and drive their e-infrastructure needs;

participate in the innovation of e-Infrastructure services;

contribute to standards and take care of their data.

2. e-Infrastructure providers should further increase their efforts to:

work closely together to fulfill the often complex user needs in a seamless way.

3. National governments and funding agencies should reinforce their efforts to:

embrace e-infrastructure coordination at the national level and build strong national e-infrastructure building blocks, enabling coherent and efficient participate in European efforts;

together analyze and evaluate their national e-infrastructure funding and governance mechanisms, identify best practices, and provide input to the development of the European e-Infrastructure landscape.

4. The European Commission should (e.g. in future Work Programmes):

provide strong incentives for cross-platform innovations and further support the coordination and consolidation of e-infrastructure service development and provisioning on the national and the European level.

The Roadmap starts with a brief elaboration on the e-IRG vision and an assessment of the extent to which the current national and international e-Infrastructures already realise this. It then presents a landscape analysis of the current European e-infrastructure system and identifies the key challenges that hinder e-Infrastructure harmonisation and integration. From the analysis, it is clear that an extended effort on "emphatic co-operation and coordination" among all main stakeholders is required. This involves the providers (the e-Infrastructure developers and operators), the users (research infrastructure including the ESFRI projects, large scientific communities, and users belonging to the "long tail of science"), and the policy makers and funders (the national governments and their agents and the EU). Good coordination can be established through a formal coordination platform among all stakeholders with strong national involvement, in line with the vision of the e-Infrastructure Commons. Also in line with the vision, such a platform can be implemented using potentially distributed, multi-stakeholder model of governance.

If you want to participate in the open consultation please go to http://e-irg.eu/roadmap for more information. You can provide comments in several ways.